Ask an AI chatbot what a contested Bible passage means, and most pastors have a strong opinion about how it should answer — and it isn’t with a confident, single verdict.
“Their approach points to using AI as a tool to aid their learning, not to tell them what to think,” said Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research, describing the new findings.
Barna Group released the research Aug. 25 as part of its ongoing State of the Church initiative, conducted in partnership with Gloo, a technology platform serving churches and ministries. The study surveyed 1,514 U.S. adults in November 2025 and 442 Protestant pastors in December 2025, asking both groups how they want artificial intelligence to handle scripture when believers disagree over what it means.
Concern runs high across the board, but it peaks in the pulpit. Seventy-four percent of U.S. adults said they’re worried about AI misinterpreting scripture, a number that climbs to 83% among practicing Christians and tops out at 94% among pastors — the highest level of concern Barna found in any group it surveyed.
That worry doesn’t translate into pastors wanting AI to stay out of the Bible altogether. Only 5% said AI should avoid contested passages entirely, and just 9% think it shouldn’t touch theology where scholars disagree. What pastors actually want is transparency: 60% said AI should lay out all the major interpretations of a disputed passage without picking a winner, compared to just 26% of practicing Christians who felt the same way.
The gap runs the other direction, too. Ten percent of pastors want AI to just name the “correct” interpretation, while 26% of practicing Christians — two and a half times the pastor rate — want that same kind of definitive answer.
Copeland traces that split back to how pastors actually study. “Writing dozens of sermons a year means testing an interpretation against multiple commentaries and traditions before deciding what to teach,” he said. “The best gift you can give people isn’t always what you know, but how you arrived at what you know.”
Related: How Will Churches Use AI? Pastors Weigh In
Even when it comes to citing sources, pastors want more legwork than most churchgoers expect. About 40% said AI should surface multiple interpretations when scholars disagree, versus roughly a third of practicing Christians who want the same. Nearly a third of pastors — 32% — go further, wanting AI to cite the scholarly disagreement directly rather than just flag that it exists.
“A citation sends someone back to the underlying scholarship to sit with a disagreement directly, whereas a caveat only flags that the disagreement exists,” Copeland explained, pointing to exactly the kind of shortcut pastors don’t want AI taking on their behalf.
Baptist Press picked up the findings, too, framing the central tension well: pastors remain wary of AI interpreting scripture even as most already use the technology somewhere in their ministry work. That’s the needle Barna’s data seems to be threading — deep unease paired with real, ongoing use.
It’s the latest release from a research partnership Gloo has leaned into for over a year. “What a privilege to release these findings at an event full of Christian broadcasters and leaders,” Gloo co-founder and CEO Scott Beck said, describing the broader Faith & AI series Barna and Gloo have built together.
A chatbot that hands over a tidy answer feels helpful in the moment, but it also does the thinking a believer might otherwise have done — wrestling with a passage, checking it against commentaries, praying it through. Pastors, who spend their careers doing exactly that kind of wrestling, seem to instinctively understand what gets lost when the process gets skipped.
Movieguide® has kept an eye on AI’s growing reach into culture and faith, from Australia barring AI-generated songs from its official music charts to broader questions about how algorithms shape what Christian families see and believe. This research lands in the same territory: the question isn’t whether AI will show up in Bible study. It’s whether it teaches people to think for themselves or trains them to stop.
For now, according to Barna, the pastors leading American churches have a clear preference. They’d rather AI hand believers the map than the destination.
Read Next: Most Pastors Are Already Using AI — Just Not in the Pulpit
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